Ergo
by bj
Summary: "You're only Catholic because your mother is, and you only go to this school because I'm the headmaster." Bartlet POV.


Disclaimer: "The West Wing" and all related materials (except for the useless details I made up for dramatic effect) belong to Aaron Sorkin, NBC, etc.  
Author's Note: This is, I suppose, a sort of post-ep or missing inner-monologue for Two Cathedrals.  
Summary: "You're only Catholic because your mother is, and you only go to this school because I'm the headmaster."  
  
  
Ergo  
By BJ Garrett  
  
I only exist because you existed.  
  
That just means I owe you my life.  
  
It doesn't make you right.  
  
And it's not a figurative existence, it's a literal one. If you had never been born, I would never have been born. Simple genetics. Not as though if you died, I would die.  
  
No, it wasn't like that at all. No, I put on my black suit and my black tie and I said a few words and earned my dignity at your funeral. That day was practise for about a dozen ahead. Mom. Coffins flowing out of cargo planes. Mrs. Landingham. You had no idea, did you?  
  
No clue that I had the potential, the capacity to become something more than the eldest male offspring of the bitter headmaster of a stuffy, hypocritical religious school. That I could be more than just your damn son.  
  
I became friends with Leo because you said he was a grubby Boston Irish Catholic looking for a hand-out. I studied for the priesthood because you looked at me with cold disapproval when I brought up the possibility. God forgive me, I dated Abbey because you disliked her amibitions of medicine.  
  
I married her because I loved her, though. That had nothing to do with you.  
  
Who am I kidding? I exist because you existed. But you had no idea.  
  
Maybe you did.  
  
You probably did. Probably knew there was something different about me. Just like Mrs. Landingham knew, just like Mom knew.  
  
No doubt that's why you gave me becauses when I asked for answers. Told me I had earned nothing in my life--not my faith, not my education. Made me feel like I could never earn anything. Slapped me for showing my ignorance, tried to make me learn.  
  
The funny thing is, when you're right it's hard to learn the wrong way.  
  
Somehow, though, it seems I did.  
  
My existence dependant upon yours. The little crystals of DNA floating around in your testes, hitting a shard of DNA in my mother's womb. Unraveling and threading together again to make me. A snag somewhere in that delicate strand.  
  
I exist because you existed. I am here, dying, a liar, because you were horny on just the night. Convinced a good Catholic girl that it was okay on just the night. Got her pregnant on just the night.  
  
You screwed up her life, and your own, and felt obligated to screw up mine, too, I suppose.  
  
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad,/They may not mean to, but they do..." That's Philip Larkin, forgive the language, Dad. He gave the ultimately sound and good advice of "Get out as quickly as you can,/And don't have any kids yourself." By the time I'd read the poem, it was too late.  
  
Ellie was on the way.  
  
They only exist because you existed.  
  
Have I passed on that little snag to them? Has the God who made them, made genetics, decided they will need to be liars too?  
  
That's a dead road, though. It's done, can't be undone. You don't know anything about it, anyway. You haven't been here for twenty years.  
  
Twenty years when Leo could have fallen out of my life--dead or as good as. Twenty years when I could have left Abbey cold. There were enough opportunities, if not reasons, for both.  
  
I'll let you in on a secret which is only a secret because I haven't gotten used to thinking of it as public knowledge:  
  
I shake. I lose control of my motor functions. There are times when I can't stand, or walk, or hold things. It's called Multiple Sclerosis, and there are all sorts of technical terms for symptoms and types, but to tell you the truth for once, I can't tell myself that stuff anymore. That's for the reporters. It was just a pinched nerve, stress headaches.  
  
You just had a cough. It couldn't be cancer. Never. Not you.  
  
But you died anyway. And I am still here, twenty years later.  
  
Twenty years in which I made New Hampshire the gem of New England. In which I became the President of the United States, created 30 million new jobs, put a Hispanic on the bench of the Supreme Court, made a woman my National Security Advisor and another the Surgeon General.  
  
These things I did because they were the right things.  
  
Because you would have told me not to.  
  
Yes, I exist because you existed.  
  
For that, and precious little else, I thank you.  
  
End.  



End file.
